What is political science,
and how do we do scientific research?

Detour: Questions to Me

Plan for today

What is Science?

Science is Curiosity

What is Political Science?

• Political science: Same as science earlier +

  • Studies human behavior and institutions:
  • “Politics is more difficult than physics.” — Albert Einstein
  • Anything related to politics/governance sphere (i.e. pretty much everything)

Empirical Method

Even More in Reality

Back to Good Practice

flowchart TB    
    subgraph Research
        direction LR
        M(Model) --> I(Inquiry) --> D(Data) --> A(Analysis) --> |Remodel| M(Model)
    end
    P{Puzzle} -.-> Research
    style Research fill:#282828,stroke:#fbf1c7,stroke-width:1px,color:#689d6a

Looking for the Question

• “I have stood on the shoulders of giants” - Isaac Newton

  • ⛏️: Vanderbilt Library, Google scholar
  • 💻: Elicit, Semantic Scholar, SCite,…
  • 🤖: ChatGPT is often wrong and outdated, so don’t trust it too much
  • ResearchRabbit for cool networks

Theory of Theories

• Theory \(\Rightarrow\) a model of the world that provides explanation of the causal relationship between two variables (\(X \rightarrow Y\)), or description of one variable (measure of \(X\))

Theories (Models)

Find good models

Find good models

Find good models

Find good models

Find good models

5 Questions About Every Theory

1. What’s my question? \(\Leftarrow\) Question

2. Why is my question important? \(\Leftarrow\) Question

3. What’s my answer to the question? \(\Leftarrow\) Model \(+\) Hypotheses

4. How would I know if I were wrong? \(\Leftarrow\) Data \(+\) Analysis

5. Was I wrong? \(\Leftarrow\) Interpretation \(+\) Remodel

1. Income Inequality

• Question: Why levels of social protection spending are low in the US?

• Model: Income inequality will lead to higher voters’ pressure on government to provide social spending (median-voter theory)

• Hypothesis: Higher income inequality will lead to higher social spending

• Data/Analysis: Measure of pre-tax income inequality and government spending across OECD countries and look at correlation

• Results: The relationship is actually in reverse…

Kenworthy and Pontusson (2005)

2. Gender Gap in Politics

• Question: How having more women in politics affect political decisions?

• Model: Having more women in legislative body can diminish “authoritative use of speech” by men, but this could depend on decision rule (majority vs unanimity)

• Hypothesis: Women will be less interrupted under unanimity rule (compared to majority rule) but only when they are in minority

• Data/Analysis: Laboratory experiment with random composition of groups and random assignment of decision rules

• Results: Support for the hypothesis in terms of overall interruptions, but not in terms of positive interruptions

Mendelberg, Karpowitz, and Oliphant (2014)

3. Discrimination

• Question: Do politicians discriminate in the services they provide?

• Model: In the US African-Americans are less likely to receive services from politicians regardless of partisan alignment

• Hypothesis: E-mails sent from putatively black aliases are less likely to receive response by legislators

• Data/Analysis: Audit experiment that randomly assigns aliases to e-mails sent to legislators across 44 US states

• Results: Overall E-mails with black aliases overall received over 5 p.p. less responses regardless of sender’s partisanship

Butler and Broockman (2011)

Example: Protests and Repression

• Question:

• Model:

• Hypothesis:

• Data/Analysis:

• Results:

Aytaç, Schiumerini, and Stokes (2017)

Reviewing Literature

Relying on Reputation

• Books from a university press with a reputation

  • Cambridge, Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Cornell, Oxford, Stanford, Michigan

Reading Yourself

Next Time

• Causal and descriptive inference

• Examples of both

• Hands on with looking for literature